Amid competition and praise, Baltimore founders discuss what Big Tech means to them.

But these and other similarly large and influential tech companies—as well as major players in other industries that employ enough tech workers to dominate markets across the country with Big Tech booths—will leave their mark on the region’s startups. From offering direct competition to providing key services to enabling a capable workforce for startups.

To further understand this result, Technical.ly recently gathered a group of Baltimore founders whose companies made 2023 RealLIST Startups last month. In our February editorial calendar themed Big Tech + With You in Mind, we discussed the relationship between local startups and Big Tech. While other companies not in the Big Five fall under the Big Tech umbrella, and some Baltimore founders are better connected than others, a large part of the conversation grew out of two key questions.

Do any of you have any connections with Big Tech companies? How do you normally interact with them?

Here are just a few of their ideas for the impact these companies could have on startups in regional tech hubs like Baltimore.

Potential competition

The first person to raise these questions was Game4Good (formerly G-Heaven eSports) founder Dexter Carr Jr., who said his closest ties to the big tech company were Microsoft.

“As for big companies like Microsoft, they have the ability to do what you’re doing as a startup,” he said. “At Game4Good, we had to find a way to move quickly where a Big Tech company thought it was a great idea, but where they wanted to add value to what they were doing. Work with us as a startup – and don’t just take what we do or want to buy us.”

I think there’s always fear, especially when a Big Tech company is doing something similar to yours.Dexter Carr Jr Game 4 good

He noted that Game4Good’s own platform, which uses an application programming interface (API) that integrates Microsoft functions while providing the company with valuable user data, essentially creates a “barrier” to the kind of acquisitions Microsoft is pursuing with Activision.

“Players come to the platform connected to their game account and we use APIs to track when they play — the time they play games, the game they play and the statistics of the system they play on,” Carr said. “If Microsoft had bought us and used the technology themselves, they couldn’t because the data we collect isn’t just for Xbox – we give them data because it’s PlayStation, PC Game and Nintendo. Mobile. We can give them data on their competitors without asking them to cease and desist. That’s our value add.”

With an iOS-only app that helps the visually impaired experience the world more easily, Reebok Co-Founder Rebecca Rosenberg shows how Big Tech accessibility can serve other users who don’t forget others. .

“One thing that I think is particularly insightful, our CTO once said, is that Apple is so big, and because they’re so big, they’re forced to design for everyone,” she said. But what’s beautiful and important about what we’re doing at ReBokeh is that we can design for a specific group.

“As a small company, we can say, no, we’re not going to include feature X, because it’s important to design specifically for a specific market, and big companies can’t do that.” Rebecca Rosenberg ReBokeh

Two-way communication

As many founders approached our questions about offering a product, Blockdoor founder Iman Carr joined the call with her business partner, Shakeel Alexander, to raise points about lenders like them.

“A lot of times, a lot of Big Tech companies and their markets are what we want to target,” says Carr, whose company’s platforms aim to connect more creative professionals of color with employers who want them. “They have internal recruiting strategies, so when these giant layoffs, we’ve seen it as a two-way street for us. They’re letting go of different types of people — not just designers, but a lot of their workforce and hiring people as well. It was a great opportunity to fill that void by offering some additional contracts and more specialized recruiting.” .The layoffs at Big Tech have helped us reevaluate our value proposition.

Dapt co-founder and Baltimore-area tech veteran Jim Kinney, who has dealt with Big Tech in a past consulting role, noted that the payroll integration startup will benefit from and secure relationships with business software giants such as Intuit and ADP.

“The Dept. is in a race to reach a certain amount,” Kinney said. “So when I’m at that size and people start noticing Dept, it’s going to have that connection and brand that differentiates it from the Big Tech companies and the big tech companies like Intuit. At that point, sure, they can buy Dept, but it’s going to be full market value. It’s the first time with Big Tech. The connection we had was initially a person who was an Uber link.Since meeting that person, our relationship has expanded beyond that.

Another co-founder — Kindle Samuel of Empathy, a company that aims to simplify hospice coordination and end-of-life care for all involved — boasts an early career as an employee of tech giant Cisco. That experience reminded her of a core belief: Ultimately, even the biggest companies consist of regular people, making relationship building just as important as it is with smaller ones.

“I often remember and I always tell people, these big companies are made by individual people.”Kindle Samuel Administrator

“When I was on the other side of Big Tech, it wasn’t uncommon for people to ask me a question or meet someone else,” she said. “So I would say that meeting, networking, and curiosity are critical to building relationships with people in Big Tech. For example, I love collaboration in the Big Tech space, so one of my most important mentors is an employee at Salesforce. She works in the AI ​​space and I can always bounce questions off of her and she is always willing to liaise with individuals or groups of individuals, both internal and external.

These founders shared such insights in a wide-ranging discussion that included honorees from RealLIST Startups and founders such as WeSolar, Fem Equity, Upfront Capital, Meridian Health, SharpRank and Drūl.

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